The present invention relates to a method of producing an artificial truffle.
A natural truffle has a unique flavor and smell, and it is indispensable to quality French cuisine. Truffles are only produced in the Perigord area of southern France and the Spanish territory adjacent to it, and their output has been declining year after year while the demand has increased.
Accordingly, some pastes imitating natural truffles have been made and introduced in the market. Such pastes have been, however, mere imitations utterly different from the natural truffle. A truffle is a kind of fungus and a plant, whereas the imitations have been made mostly of lard, pork or simple starch, and are quite different from the natural truffle in flavor, smell, etc.
The present inventor disclosed a method of producing an artificial truffle in Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 58-126749 laid open July 28, 1983, and the method disclosed therein is based on a basic idea of selecting main components entirely from vegetable substances. A product made by this method is little different in flavor and smell from the natural truffle, but it has something to be desired in the sense of eating, or texture. Further, as the foregoing method placed emphasis on the convenience in the use of the product, no consideration was given to make the appearance of the product similar to the natural truffle. Accordingly, the appearance of the product made by the above method was also different from that of the natural truffle.
The present invention provides a method of producing an improved artificial truffle. It is an object of this invention to achieve a sense of taste and eating close to that of the natural truffle, which is unique to this fungi, and also to imitate the appearance of the natural truffle.